I wish more than anything that I was reporting in today with better news.
We had our egg retrieval on Wednesday, and everything seemed great. I woke up from the anaesthesia (I'm always a little anxious about that part), and went to recovery where we learned that the doctor had retrieved ten eggs. Not a stellar number, but certainly something that seemed workable.
We got home and enjoyed some quiet time out on our porch while my fabulous cleaning lady made my house sparkle. Once she was gone, I popped some Percocet and crashed on the couch. I woke from my coma a couple of times for a little television viewing and to eat, but I mostly slept the day away.
When I woke up on Thursday, I was waiting anxiously for the fertility report from our embryologist. Of course, he called right before I walked out the door to go to work to drop the bomb on me.
Out of our ten eggs, only six were mature. Out of those six, only three fertilized. He reminded me, perhaps a little too emphatically that quality is more important than quantity, and while we most likely won't be able to freeze any embryos for future efforts, it only takes one good embryo for this round. So, we'll be doing the transfer on Saturday at noon. Assuming there are any good embryos left to transfer.
I feel absolutely sick to my stomach. I had to go to work at two different jobs--one with the baby I've been taking care of since he was 2 weeks old and his big sister, and the other for a little boy whose mom just had a baby girl last night. I held the baby as he fell alseep and tried not to cry. I oohed and aahed over photos of the new baby girl born just after midnight and tried not to cry. I sat on the sofa while the 2 year old napped and tried not to cry. I spent the entire day trying not to cry, and once I got home and was free to break down, I couldn't.
Not to introduce a political debate, just to clarify my mindset, I've never been one to believe that life begins at conception--or fertilization in this instance. However, I think attempting to create a baby this way certainly makes me much more protective and attached to those little embryos in the petrie dish. We've been trying to get pregnant for a year and a half and in all of that time, I have no idea how many eggs have fertilized and just failed to implant. But knowing that we have three potential babies in a lab and there's nothing I can do to help them along breaks my heart.
I'm trying not to give up hope, but I'm also trying to prepare myself for the worst. The awful part is that we won't know for another two weeks if the transfer even worked. I don't know how I'm not going to go crazy. On top of that, all of the HCG coursing through my system is already giving me faux pregnancy symptoms, and I'm bloated and crampy from the egg retrieval, just adding insult to injury. Or injury to insult.
Hopefully I'll be back with better news next week, but whichever way it goes, I want to thank you all so much for your support through all of this nuttiness. I can't tell you how comforting it is to know how many people I have in my corner, wishing for good things for us, and I just hope that all of that positive thinking is enough to bring about a positve outcome.
